Deb­bie Ja­cob

Now that stu­dents are set­tled in school, we need to talk about what they should be learn­ing on any giv­en school day. School is a place where stu­dents go to learn "sub­jects": maths, Eng­lish, so­cial stud­ies, sci­ence...but the most valu­able lessons in our schools come from the hid­den cur­ricu­lum.

The hid­den cur­ricu­lum pro­vides stu­dents with val­ues and be­liefs. It is what makes a sub­ject mean­ing­ful and not a mean­ing­less col­lec­tion of facts. The hid­den cur­ricu­lum is what teach­ers should be think­ing about when they teach. It's the pur­pose be­hind their teach­ing.

So­ci­ol­o­gist Philip Jack­son was the first per­son to of­fi­cial­ly use the term "hid­den cur­ricu­lum" and al­though it was first used in 1968, the con­cept of a hid­den cur­ricu­lum is time­less. So­ci­eties have al­ways used schools to shape stu­dents, and Jack­son claimed that the hid­den cur­ricu­lum was ba­si­cal­ly re­spon­si­ble for the so­cial­i­sa­tion process: the mes­sages stu­dents processed from the ex­pe­ri­ences of be­ing taught. It is of­ten the mes­sage that no one talks about; that's why it's called a hid­den cur­ricu­lum.

It is easy to think that pass­ing sub­jects is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant so that stu­dents can climb up the aca­d­e­m­ic lad­der, when in re­al­i­ty they need to be study­ing more than all the lit­er­ary el­e­ments of a nov­el they're read­ing for Eng­lish class and more than the dates of Eman­ci­pa­tion or In­de­pen­dence.

Eng­lish-and all sub­jects for that mat­ter-should teach stu­dents how to think and analyse in­for­ma­tion in a way that makes life mean­ing­ful. School is not of much use if stu­dents don't learn how to be­come mod­el cit­i­zens.

One im­por­tant as­pect of the hid­den cur­ricu­lum is a school's man­date to pro­vide the lead­ers of to­mor­row. Lead­er­ship can­not be mea­sured in the sub­jects one mas­ters. Lead­er­ship is mea­sured by the morals and val­ues that turn or­di­nary peo­ple in­to car­ing and in­spir­ing lead­ers. Those val­ues come from the hid­den cur­ricu­lum.

Sad­ly, the hid­den cur­ricu­lum in many of our schools seeks to sup­port colo­nial val­ues by sup­press­ing a sense of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty in stu­dents, when schools need to con­sid­er how we nur­ture the lead­ers of to­mor­row. We need stu­dents who can de­bate, give speech­es, write es­says and get their points across in an ar­tic­u­late way in every as­pect of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The pur­pose of that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is em­bed­ded in the hid­den cur­ricu­lum.

Of course I recog­nise teach­ers, for the most part, are do­ing the best they can do un­der the cir­cum­stances. If teach­ers race through a cur­ricu­lum or worse yet, drag out a cur­ricu­lum for­ev­er so that stu­dents can have facts drilled in­to their heads, it is be­cause this is what the sys­tem ex­pects them to do.

I have no prob­lem with ex­ams-SEA, CXC and CAPE-if they are mean­ing­ful, but they are on­ly mean­ing­ful if they mea­sure a stu­dent's an­a­lyt­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

While teach­ers be­come bogged down with teach­ing sub­jects they can for­get that buried in­side the hid­den cur­ricu­lum are all the so­cial cues and so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions that stu­dents should mas­ter while they're in school.

Many of these rules, like "treat all au­thor­i­ty fig­ures with re­spect," seem like they should be com­mon sense, but in this day and age, where we're all hard pressed to find any au­thor­i­ty fig­ure who is treat­ed with re­spect, this is not an au­to­mat­ic les­son learned by our stu­dents.

How can stu­dents know to be re­spect­ful to a teacher-or any adult for that mat­ter-when they watch tele­vi­sion shows where rude chil­dren or teenagers are por­trayed as cool? How can we ex­pect stu­dents to re­spect their teach­ers if par­ents don't re­spect teach­ers?

Stu­dents are more like­ly to see anger, rude­ness and dis­re­spect any­where they turn. Switch on the ra­dio or the TV, dri­ve down the road and stu­dents will get many lessons on dis­re­spect. Re­spect is no longer an au­to­mat­ic re­sponse taught at home and re­in­forced by so­ci­ety in gen­er­al. Re­spect has to be taught in school as part of the hid­den cur­ricu­lum.

Stu­dents need to see ex­am­ples of re­spect in lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry. They need to see it in class­room par­tic­i­pa­tion and for­mal ac­tiv­i­ties like speech­es and de­bates. They need to see teach­ers demon­strat­ing re­spect to­wards each oth­er and to­wards stu­dents.

Stu­dents don't au­to­mat­i­cal­ly know that re­spect is con­veyed by lan­guage as much as it is con­veyed by tone. Stu­dents need to learn to adapt to the chang­ing so­cial cir­cum­stances. So­cial cues and so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions are im­por­tant parts of the hid­den cur­ricu­lum be­cause they give a class­room and so­ci­ety a sense of dig­ni­ty and sta­bil­i­ty so these lessons are no less im­por­tant than the ac­tu­al sub­jects stu­dents learn in school.

A gen­er­a­tion ago, we would have been hor­ri­fied to hear curse words on the ra­dio or TV. We would have been hor­ri­fied to hear our par­ents or our friends curse, but this is the norm for chil­dren to­day. The bound­aries for good or ac­cept­able be­hav­iour, re­spect or dis­re­spect, are am­bigu­ous for most stu­dents.

This alone demon­strates just how the hid­den cur­ricu­lum is more im­por­tant than ever. Yes, there is so much stu­dents should be learn­ing in school, and it is far more than mas­ter­ing sub­jects.